[Eberron] Faking Dragonmarks

[fuindordm]

I agree that the party might find a solution in Xendrik, especially if they have an artificer who can reverse-engineer the creation forge and figure out how to incorporate nex elements into its design.

Aside from that, they could always get the Syberis mark of creation--a prestige class available to any human at 12th level. It might not be totally unreasonable that a PC who has put so much effort into bringing a creation forge back into the world should suddenly find themselves marked by the prophecy in this way...

Ben

 

[Staffan]

- Given these origins, how would it be possible to dublicate their powers sufficiently to operate a Creation Forge?

Spoilers for the City of Towers novel:
[sblock]In the City of Towers novel, some people (and I use that term loosely) have found a way to extract certain abilities from creatures (killing them in the process) and transfer them onto others. They even do that on a dragon-marked halfling (although that ability never gets transferred, it just gets extracted into an elixir form or something like that).[/sblock]

Now, how to go about doing that... well, that's a source of adventure, not to mention a moral quandry.

 

[Anti-Sean]

Isn't there some sort of prestige class in one of the supplements that can do so, at the cost of annoying lots of dragons if they get wind of it?

The 10th level ability of the Cataclysm Mage (great class!) from the Explorer's Handbook (great book!) allows one to generate the effects of a dragonmark/a dragonmark itself. And yes, you immediately draw the attention of the dragons of Argonessen when you use it.

Come to think of it...why not kobolds?

Great, now I'm picturing a Creation Forge as having a bunch of koblods hidden inside it, furiously trying to assemble a warforged! So *that's* Cannith's secret!

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

The 10th level ability of the Cataclysm Mage (great class!) from the Explorer's Handbook (great book!) allows one to generate the effects of a dragonmark/a dragonmark itself. And yes, you immediately draw the attention of the dragons of Argonessen when you use it.

So there is a precedent for this. Nifty. And since I don't use D&D as the game system (I'm using GURPS for this campaign), I can introduce this without worrying too much about relative power levels.

So perhaps the PCs can get on the trail of a reclusive wizard who has been Laughed At at Morgrave University (and indeed, is rather excentric), but who might be willing to test his theories given incentive.

And if the PCs leave him out of sight for some time, they can return to find his room in a curiously molten look. But they can still find his notes, and attempt to use them... if they dare.

But what kind of theories would such a guy have about Dragonmarks and the Draconic Prophecy? Or about the origin of warforged, for that matter? It doesn't have to be too coherent - just something that might seem plausible after a drink or two...

 

[Glyfair]

Isn't there some sort of prestige class in one of the supplements that can do so, at the cost of annoying lots of dragons if they get wind of it?

Yeah, I personally don't mind it as long as it's the only way (it's a pretty unique class, to say the least). Indeed, that's one way the PCs could do it.

BTW, I recommend searching the Ask Keith Baker threads on the official site for creation forges. & perhaps dragonmarks. You might have your imagination piqued.

 

[Glyfair]

But what kind of theories would such a guy have about Dragonmarks and the Draconic Prophecy? Or about the origin of warforged, for that matter? It doesn't have to be too coherent - just something that might seem plausible after a drink or two...

Well, the fluff of the class is that they learn some secrets of the various Cataclysms that have occured and gain the abilities from their partial understanding. So, it's going to be based on sound knowledge. Of course, that doesn't mean understandable knowledge

 

[Volaran]

So a person with a specific item creation feat might suffice. Perhaps one character with the create magic armor feat and another with the create wondrous item feat? Or one character with both?

But maybe House Cannith has build the creation forge in a way to prevent non-house members to operate them - without deactivating the "mark detection". So it'd be theoretically possible to operate the forge with the feats mentioned above, but you'd need to tinker with the forge first (obviously the Lord of Blades succeeded here, so it's possible).

The means to deactivate the detection is up to you, and it could be nearly anything. Dragonshards, creation patterns, a special fluid (blood from a House Cannith member for instance), all of it, or something else - have fun

I don't think I'd personally allow standard feats to bypass any restrictions, or even a UMD check (since that would be too close to emulating a feat directly). However, I like the idea that Cannith may have built in the Dragonmark restriction.

Since Cannith posesses the design, anyone trying to replicate it may focus on trying to replicating a dragonmark, or subvert a person with the Mark of Making, rather than use it without the mark.

It seems to me this would make tracking down things easier for Cannith. Keeping tabs on every marked member of the house, and some foundlings is much easier than trying to track every magewright, wizard, sorceror and artificer with an interest in warforged.

 

[MavrickWeirdo]

But what kind of theories would such a guy have about Dragonmarks and the Draconic Prophecy? Or about the origin of warforged, for that matter? It doesn't have to be too coherent - just something that might seem plausible after a drink or two...

Here is a "crazy theory" I made back before the Eberron book came out, and all we had were hints

One artificer had a theory that golems cannot handle large-scale combat, because they are too orderly. Everything to them is an ally or an enamy, attack or wait, black or white. They decided to create a special forge, which would act as an energy conduit to the plane of Kythri (The Churning Chaos). The hope was that using elemental chaos energy to fuel the spell would result in an automaton capable of creative problem solving. The plan succeeded beyond expectations. As a unintentional result, the Warforged are not just smarter than golems, they are alive and have souls.

The artificer made many forges, so magewrites could use them to make Warforged. The method of making the forges (and why they work) was a closely held secret. For over two decades this continued without major problem.

When the forges started releasing sentient chaos energy, without a body, few actually noticed. The early discharges were weak and uncommon. With time, the frequency and the power of the energy released increased and took on specific characteristics. It came to be called Living Spells.

This was occurring because The Plane of Chaos was drawing closer to Eberron. The closer it came, the more unstable were the forges. When Kythri came into coterminous position with Eberron, the forges became open gates flooding chaos into the world, until the chaos destroyed the forges. This was the creation of the Mournlands.

Even if someone were to rebuild or recreate a forge, If someone (who knew all the above) wanted to make more warforged their best chance would be using a "modified soul jar spell" to force a Living Spell into a Warforged body.

 

[Glyfair]

However, I like the idea that Cannith may have built in the Dragonmark restriction.

I like the idea that Cannith was playing with some Xen'drik schema and couldn't get it to work because he was missing something that hasn't been around since the giants were ruling the area. By playing around with it, he managed to partially get around that restriction by using the Mark of Making.

So, if someone with high technical knowledge and creativity were to find something else that might work, they probably wouldn't end up with Warforged. Instead, they'd end up with something similar but different (depending on what was being used instead of the Mark of Making).

 

[Volaran]

I like the idea that Cannith was playing with some Xen'drik schema and couldn't get it to work because he was missing something that hasn't been around since the giants were ruling the area. By playing around with it, he managed to partially get around that restriction by using the Mark of Making.

So, if someone with high technical knowledge and creativity were to find something else that might work, they probably wouldn't end up with Warforged. Instead, they'd end up with something similar but different (depending on what was being used instead of the Mark of Making).

That sounds cool. On the Wizards boards, I had asked Keith if there was anything else the creation forges might have been used for, to cause them to be banned by the Treaty of Thonehold (eg. Maybe make it easy and inexpensive to create eternal wands), but he was pretty clear that it was a warforged issue, and that they had other wonderous locations to keep their edge on other forms of mundane and magical item creation.

There have been warforged components found on Xen'drik, but no warforged. This could support your idea. The components could be ment for another creation. Each 'shortcut' used to create or use a creation forge could produce a different base creature (or thing, or whatever) that could then be refined, as there are different versions of the base warforged design.